Secret Service Under Fire: How DEI, Low Morale, and Systemic Agency Failures Threaten to Take Down America’s Elite Security Force
by Mat Staver
Growing ineptitude from within the White House and the agencies it oversees culminated in a catastrophic security failure witnessed by the world on July 13: the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump.
While Trump was the target, he was not the only victim. Beloved husband and father Cory Comperatore was killed by a stray bullet while shielding his wife and daughter. Two others were critically injured. To say that the circumstances leading up to the razor thin margin between life and death for President Trump need to be investigated is a gross understatement.
As details continue to emerge on the massive security oversights, blame is being placed squarely on the shoulders of the United States Secret Service (USSS). From failing to respond to pleas from bystanders to ignoring their own protocol, the Secret Service stunned an entire nation with its incompetence on full display.
While calls for the current Director’s resignation continue unabated, what many may not know is that the Secret Service itself has been in crisis-management mode for over a decade. And indeed, they may be bringing about their own demise.
A decade of Secret Service failures
The tragic confluence of events on July 13 didn’t happen in a vacuum; rather, they were the culmination of a decade’s worth systemic failures within the Secret Service itself.
It’s not that the Secret Service’s dysfunction was not known. Back in 2015, a bi-partisan report on the Secret Service from the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform highlights “problems that undermine USSS’s protective mission predate and postdate... [2012]”. In other words, Congress had been aware of the systemic issues within the Secret Service for over a decade.
At the time of the report's release, the then-Chairman stated the agency is in crisis. He added that while misconduct and security breaches persist, “its mission inexplicably continues to expand beyond the zero-fail mission to protect the President ... Strong leadership from the top is needed to address the systemic mismanagement and restore its former prestige.”
Findings from the report itself are a disturbing read in the wake of Saturday’s events, given the failure to address them. From 2012-2014, three different directors in a row “provided inaccurate information to Congress.” A summary of the report highlights four separate incidents of security breaches and misconduct, ranging from shots fired on the White House to intoxicated Secret Service members interfering with a crime scene just outside the White House grounds.
Seemingly left unchecked, the agency’s woes worsened. In the years leading up to the failed assassination attempt on President Trump, issues persisted, exacerbated over time by ineffective presidential administrations, flawed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, and low morale.
Unsurprisingly, the agency has faced continual criticism since President Trump left office: In 2021, they were scrutinized for deleting text messages sent during the time of the January 6th protests; in April 2024, a female agent physically assaulted her superior officer, and one month later the House Oversight Committee opened an investigation into the agency related to “incidents and reports of potential vulnerabilities."
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Any one of these incidents alone is a monumental failing for a security agency whose mission is ‘zero- fail,’ for a single flaw could be fatal. Detailing just one of these travesties, at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) in September of 2014:
“The President’s security was breached at least three times”
“USSS allowed unvetted armed guards near the President”
“USSS did not adhere to its own protective methodology while the President was at the CDC”
“USSS initially blamed the CDC after an insufficient review of the incident.”
Fast forward to July 13, 2024, delete the old bullet points, and insert these:
A former President’s security was breached at the Trump rally
USSS allowed a gunman on a roof with a clear line of sight to the President
The USSS failed to follow their own protocol to immediately evacuate the former President upon learning there was an armed suspect on the roof
USSS blamed a sloped roof
A decade later, history repeats itself.
Death by DEI
Director Kimberly Cheatle, sworn in under Biden in 2022, further eroded crucial standards needed to keep the agency strong by advancing the agency’s fatally flawed DEI policies.
Touting diversity as a ‘major priority’, Cheatle committed to have 30% of the Secret Service made up of women by 2030. This misguided priority was already under scrutiny by Rep. James Comer, who, referencing the female agent fired in April, highlighted his concerns about the agency’s hiring process - “specifically whether previous incidents in [this agent’s] work history were overlooked . . . as years of staff shortages had led the agency to lower once stricter standards as part of a diversity, equity and inclusion effort.”
This DEI ‘priority’ was also painfully on display at the Trump rally: While there is nothing wrong with female Secret Service agents, video footage, photographs and media reports suggest three of the female agents surrounding President Trump were massively incompetent – with one appearing to hide behind the President and another (possibly the same one) unable to holster a gun. All were simply too short to properly shield him. Sympathetically, fault shouldn’t be pinned on these women but on the Director who sent them on that assignment in the first place.
Ongoing low morale
A known issue for years (as the 2015 report highlights), the agency continues to battle low morale. In May this year, a Bloomberg White House reporter shined a spotlight on an internal petition that called for a congressional investigation due to concerns that ranged from inadequate training to “potential insider threats” that could compromise national security.
Clearly whatever internal policy changes the agency made (or did not make) to address morale has, like its security protocols, failed to achieve their desired result.
Indeed, could it be that the final death knell in the once-prestigious agency would come from [at least] 39 signatures within? In the wake of Saturday's events, more than one Secret Service agent has reached out to journalist James O’Keefe who reported: “they are discouraged. There is the physical courage to fight, and then there is a more rare form of moral courage to have the stones to stand up publicly. I know they will soon.”
One can only hope.
Where to Go from Here
In a history-making plot twist, we are indeed witnessing an ironic turn in Saturday’s events: what should have resulted in the death of a Presidential Candidate could, in fact, result in the ‘death’ of the Secret Service.
An investigation into the Secret Service is not enough. Calling for the resignation of Director Cheatle is not enough either. What is needed is a complete overhaul, if not end, of an agency whose incompetence created the circumstances that, by God’s hand alone, did not end in more than one death.
The Secret Service must do some soul searching. There are only two options: be rendered irrelevant or return to its core mission: zero-fail.
Originally published in The Stream.
Follow more of Mat’s news and views HERE.